


If That's What It Takes

by NervousAsexual



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: And was like, Electrocution, Exhaustion, Gore, Hurt/Comfort, I feel like there's a lot going on here, I'm Sorry, Kidnapping, Torture, Whump, and I'm not great at explaining it, but I saw some art, need more, well robotic gore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-06
Updated: 2018-10-06
Packaged: 2019-07-27 07:46:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,274
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16214612
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NervousAsexual/pseuds/NervousAsexual
Summary: While escorting a group of escaped synths to Acadia Nick and Nora attacked by raiders. Nick sacrifices himself to buy time for the others to escape, but the raiders decide to torture the info they need out of him.





	If That's What It Takes

**Author's Note:**

> entirely 100% inspired by [](https://dappypappy.tumblr.com/post/152191804824/i-made-some-good-ol-nick-valentine-torture-hes)  
>   
> you can check out the artist, dappypappy, [right here!](https://dappypappy.tumblr.com/)

The raiders think they're real clever. They think they're gonna torture it out of him. If any of them had any sense they'd kill him and then wire his memories to an access terminal, but, luckily, raiders are raiders are raiders.

There's three raiders, as far as he can tell, each one in face-obscuring masks. He's not sure where the others have gone--it took ten of them to take him down, not counting the ones he put bullets in. Not as good a number as he'd've liked, but it got the job done. They've got his arms strung up over his head and his body shoved back across a table and they think the rope will keep him still.

If it keeps them from tracking down Nora and the group they were escorting, it absolutely will.

"Where's the synths?" the one in the balaclava asks cheerfully. She's enjoying this.

He says nothing, and another raiders smashes a baseball bat into his head. His sensors are knocked offline for a moment. If he were flesh and blood he'd be seeing stars, or maybe dead.

"That was a good one," says the one with the bat. He puts Nick's fedora back on his head. A joke, maybe, but it's actually a little comfort.

"You're going to talk to me. Everyone does in the end."

He won’t. It doesn’t matter what they do to him, because the only other option would have been to let Nora stay behind and keep them busy while the synth refugees got away. That’s no choice at all. They would have killed Nora. He’s at least built to withstand a lot of abuse.

“You want me to try openin’ him up?” the one with the bat asks.

The one in the balaclava nods. The other raider takes a handful of Nick's shirt in both hands and rips it open, sending buttons bouncing across the floor.

"Uh..." says the female raider.

They are distracted, staring at the holes in his chest and abdomen. He uses the moment to twist the exposed metal of his wrist against the ropes.

"Geez," the one in the balaclava says at last, chuckling. "Rough out there for a synth, huh?"

The one with the bat hooks his hand around the jagged edge of Nick's synthetic flesh and tugs, like he thinks he can rip it like paper. Nick tries to keep as expressionless as he can, but he's really struggling after that blow to the head.

"That don't hurt, running around with open wounds?" the one with the bat asks.

It does. It always does, just not for long.

The deep one in his abdomen, the one the raider's hand is in, hurt for a few months, and that was unusually long. When he got it the synthetic skin had already been weakened by point-blank laser fire before he took a vertibird blade to the guts. The mutant wielding it had got his hand around Nick's body and slammed him into the ground over and over, and he'd have been a goner if Nora hadn't thrown a synth relay grenade into the chaos as a distraction. She'd dragged him out of there and shot him so full of stims he couldn't remember how they got back to Sanctuary. Sturges patched up the mechanical side of things, but the flesh wound ached without cessation until the nerves finally died.

The third raider, who has been silent this whole time, walks up and examines the hole and the parts behind it. Without a word he leaves the room.

“Hit him again,” the one with the balaclava says, and the other strikes him so hard in the mouth with the base of the bat he felt the metal under his skin give. “Do you even feel that?”

He feels a lot of things. There’s no getting away from it. He’s programmed to feel, so every time a section of nerves goes dead he feels the others all the more. The older he gets, the more wear and tear on his body, the more he realizes he can’t go on like this.

“I’m having fun,” the raider with the bat says.

“Eh, close enough.”

He can taste coolant leaking into his mouth, but all he can feel is resignation. The way the Commonwealth is right now, he has to go on whether he likes it or not. He can’t sit by and do nothing. If he had some control over what memories he retains, if he had any say in it at all, he’d erase everything. Far Harbor, Acadia. Nora. DiMa. If keeping them safe meant forgetting everything again, so be it.

But he can’t forget. It’s not that simple. So instead he’s got to make sure the raiders don’t find out.

That much he can do.

He tries the ropes again. They haven’t loosened at all. A shame. What he’d really like to do is get even one hand loose--that would be enough, the ropes are hooked through a steel loop high up on the wall but it’s the same strand tied to both hands--and break some raiders in half.

The man tosses the bat in an arc from one hand to another. “You ever fuck a synth?”

“No,” snaps the raider in the balaclava. “And neither have you. They don’t got holes.”

“This one does,” the man says before pressing the end into the hole the vertibird blade left. The flesh is dead, thankfully, but the bat pushes the wires inside him out of place. The blunt end of the bat slams up against the cluster of nerves bundled at his spine. It sends a thousand sensations through him. Feels like pain, like burning in his legs and prickling and a numbness on his left side.

His face must show some kind of reaction, because the man takes the bat out.

“That got him,” he says, and plunges his hand into the wires.

Nick tries to struggle--it doesn’t hurt but the raider can do so much damage in there--but something the man takes hold of reacts and Nick grunts as a shockwave rolls through him and the man lets out a yelp and falls back to the floor. Nick can’t see him but he can hear the little yelps still coming. A safety measure--strong electrical pulses directed at anyone tampering with Institute property.

Ironic it’d be the Institute that protects him. A wry smile finds its way onto his face. Not a big one--the pulse must have come directly from his power reserves because it took a lot out of him--but he can’t help feeling a bit smug.

“Pretty funny, huh?” the raider in the balaclava says to him. She looks him up and down. Her eyes linger a little too long on the tangle of wires.

“I could have died!” the other raider shouts.

“That’s why it’s funny, Kevin.” The one with the balaclava comes closer. “Did that hurt you, synth?” She picks up the bat.

Ah, christ, he is able to think, just before the raider jabs the end of the bat into him and triggers more pulses.

They come and they keep coming. The pulses are designed as a one-time surge to knock someone back, not for this. The bat keeps pressing into him and the pulses keep coming. They roll through him without pause and they don’t hurt him as much as they drain his energy reserves but god almighty does the feeling scare him. Each pulse hits him like a contraction and he struggles against the ropes as he gets weaker and weaker.

The raider jams the bat in deeper, sending a sudden tearing pain through his body, and withdraws. He goes slack, too weak to struggle.

“Well?” the raider asks. The one on the floor is sitting up now, watching him.

When Nick gets up the strength to look at himself there’s a clump of tangled wires torn and reaching out from his belly. In his mind he sees the vertibird blade buried up to the hilt in him, smells the putrid breath of the mutant, knows in his heart that he has been broken beyond repair.

Forget, he begs himself. Please, please forget.

“Piece of shit synth,” the male raider says, struggling to his feet. Nick is too weak to brace for another strike, but it is not the bat which connects. Instead the raider plunges a combat knife into his neck, tearing away wires at random. Entire segments of flesh, his right eye, the sound in one ear, all go dark. He wants it to hurt because that would mean he still has some sensation there, but he can feel only the pressure on the nerves of his neck as the rest of his body tingles, his processors forcibly attuning to what’s left that he can feel. He feels the heat of the raider nearby, smells the body odor, feels the rope cutting into the remaining flesh of his wrist with overwhelming intensity. His mind races to keep up but it’s too much, it’s too much. The raider drives the knife into his thigh.

With so many nerves shut down he feels every inch of the blade slice through his skin, and a scream tears itself from his throat.

The raider with the balaclava chuckles. “He does have a voice!”

The scream ends in a sob.

He tries to ground himself, always a challenge and now, with so many wounds to process, nearly impossible. He’s not afraid anymore. Maybe he’s too weak to be. He hurts, but he’s okay now. He’s not going to betray anyone. This is nothing. He’s spent years feeling the aches of split skin that was never designed to heal. He’s been in almost constant pain for the last century, and they will not break him.

He lets his head sink down against his arm. Coolant and oil leaks from his nose and mouth onto his shirt sleeve, but at this point he doesn’t care. Let the raiders take him apart if they want. Nora got away, that’s what’s important, and Far Harbor is…

Someone new enters the room, and a familiar voice says, “Valentine.”

He raises his head a little and gets his eyes open just enough to see.

“Malone,” he tries to say in return, but only a whimper comes out. He’s too weak to even form words.

Skinny Malone looks disappointed. “Come on, Valentine, at least pretend you’re glad to see me.”

There’s others at his side. The third raider is back, and a triggerman with an eyebot helmet. Nick struggles to focus.

“Oh, come on,” the raider in the balaclava complains. “We were handling it.”

The third raider scoffs. “Yeah, at the speed of a drunk bloatfly. Now we’re going to get the info while we’re all still young.”

Slowly Nick twists himself back and forth against the ropes. It’s a small comfort.

“Itch here used to be a Rust Devil,” Skinny says, maybe to the raiders but definitely to Nick. “He can find out anything you want, quick and easy like.”

“He was gonna talk,” the raider with the bat says.

The triggerman pats the duffel bag slung over his shoulder. “Talk’s cheap. We’re going straight to the source.”

Any fight left in Nick drains away as the triggerman starts unloading his bag. Wires, cables, a portable terminal he plugs into the wall. Exactly what they need to get exactly what they want.

He wills himself to forget, to erase everything he was and is. He might as well be wishing for wings to carry him away.

His head sinks back. He’s out of ideas, out of options, out of energy. With what he has left he locks eyes with Skinny Malone. Don’t let them do this, he thinks, but he knows the prospect of recapturing all those escaped synths is too much to bargain against. The Institute has the resources the Triggermen need. Nick has nothing but a sob story.

Skinny doesn’t break eye contact. If he ever had any misgivings he’s evidently made peace with them.

The triggerman plunges his hands into the hole in Nick’s belly. He is not deliberately rough with him, but there are so many crossed wires in his abdomen that every touch aches and burns. There’s definitely nothing gentle in the triggerman. His movements get more and more impatient as he paws around in Nick’s insides, looking for the port to plug into.

One of the raiders laughs.

“Try a little lower,” she says. “This one thought he found something down there.”

“Shut up,” snaps the triggerman, and jams the cable directly into the trigger for the pulses.

Nick moans as the pulse tears through him again, but this time is so much worse. The surge combines with an arc of electricity from the terminal. His entire body convulses as it hits him, so hard that all the electricity in the room shorts out.

The room is plunged into darkness and the short circuit gives Nick just enough energy to finally tear his wrist from the ropes. He pulls the rest of the rope down with him. The raiders are arguing and shoving and grabbing out into the dark. He runs.

They’re in a subway tunnel, some kind of maintenance room, apparently. His legs are unsteady as he runs along the track. He’s got to get out. He’s not sure where he’s at, but if he’s near Diamond City, or, god willing, a settlement… He doesn’t want to drag trouble back to the settlers but if it means not betraying his own brother and the only safe haven for synths in the entire damn wasteland, then what else can he do?

He slams hard into a corner--he’s at a terminal now, a subway stop, there’s the exit right there--he wants to stop and set off the ticket taker protectron there in its tube, but he’s losing power fast. He throws himself against the exit door and stumbles out into a heavy wind. He tries to take in his surroundings. He’s near the beach--a stormy grey sea slams into the sand--and the empty shore stretches in either direction as far as he can see. That’s not far. The power surge is failing fast. His senses are restricting themselves in an attempt to keep him going.

Hard little raindrops spatter against his body, sending exhaustive sparks up from the exposed wires. He can’t tell if what he’s feeling is weariness or despair or a combination of both. He knows the raiders can’t be far behind him. The only place he can go is forward, into the water.

He stumbles forward, struggling to brace himself for the impact of the waves. He has no choice. He has to get far enough out, do enough damage to himself to corrupt his memories. The raiders can’t find out the location of Acadia. They can’t know about Far Harbor, or DiMa, or…

A body, heavy, too heavy to stop, slams into him. It knocks him down into the damp sand and he sobs again, the water’s so close…

“Not the water, ya mook!” Skinny Malone shouts in his ear.

Skinny hauls himself up. Nick tries to turn himself over but his joints feel gritty and his muscles watery and he falls back into the sand. All he can do is look up at the rain and pray to forget. Skinny takes hold of his head, one thick hand cradling the torn flesh of his cheek with a gentleness Nick didn’t expect, not here, not from him.

“Take the damn boat,” Skinny says, turning him to face a distant shape bobbing along the shore. “Count yourself lucky I’m so good-natured and take the boat.”

He doesn’t understand. He’s hurting. He’s dazed. Skinny pulls him to his feet and points him toward the shape.

“Get goin’ before I change my mind,” he growls.

He tries to turn his head to look at the gangster and Skinny roughly twists him back.

“Get the hell out of here, Nicky. Next time I see your ugly mug I’m gonna put so many goddamn bullets in it.”

Skinny puts a gun in his hand but he barely registers that fact. He’s running. With what little strength he has he’s running. The knife wound in his thigh throbs and burns, and the last thing he remembers is falling into the boat and setting the course for Longfellow’s cabin before he shuts down.

* * *

There are floating images. Stormy sky. Fog rolling in. A shape leaning over him. By the time he gets the pieces put together he’s lying on his back somewhere dark. His clothes are gone. He can feel electrical tape on the knife wounds.

He’s gathered back just enough energy for consciousness but not enough to turn his head and investigate the gentle clack of metal on concrete. He lies there in isolation until the clacking approaches. At last DiMa walks into his line of sight, and Nick is weak with relief.

DiMa observes that his eyes are glowing again and nods to him as he adjusts a thick cable over the back of the couch Nick is resting on.

“Your friend and the synths arrived safely,” he says in his stilted but vaguely comforting voice. “She has gone back out looking for you but we are trying to get word to her that you are safe.”

Nick’s eyes drift from DiMa to the cable in his hands. DiMa follows his gaze.

“Faraday designed this for me,” he says. “High efficiency charging cable. This body can be… difficult to maintain.”

Without a word Nick watches him open the panel on his abdomen. The jagged hole there, exacerbated by everything that’s happened, is nearly as big as the panel itself now. He’s so tired. There is still pain, but he’s too exhausted to acknowledge it.

Then DiMa tries to put his hand into Nick’s belly.

He can’t speak. He puts all his remaining energy into wrapping his hand around DiMa’s wrist.

DiMa pauses, watching him with those lifeless eyes.

“It won’t hurt you, brother,” he says quietly.

He feels the electrical pulse so vividly he can’t believe it’s only a memory.

“Do you trust me?”

What choice does he have?

DiMa gently pries his hand from his wrist. “It won’t hurt you,” he repeats. “It works fast, and it will put you into a state of hibernation first.” The steel of his fingers toys with the steel of Nick’s. “Faraday tells me it’s not unlike sleep.”

It’s been a long, long time since he’s slept.

“Will you allow…?”

Nicks hand slips from DiMa’s. He closes his eyes. What choice…?

“Nick. I will not do this without your permission.”

He can’t speak.

“Nick?”

He barely manages to twitch his head.

“Alright. I’m going to put it in you now.”

He feels the movement of the cable and DiMa’s slender bones moving it into place. There’s a jolt as it locks into position. He wants to see what is happening but can’t open his eyes.

“Alright, Nick. Alright.”

There’s a sudden buzz of electricity where the cable meets his body and he spasms without control. DiMa takes his hand. If he could he would cry.

DiMa is not wrong. The buzz turns to warmth. One by one his systems shut down with no input on his part and he can only watch them go.

“Thank you,” DiMa says. “Thank you for allowing me to care for you, brother.”

There is nothing else he can do. Nick lets go of conscious thought, and at long, long last sleep takes him.


End file.
